Thiollierea Montrouz.

Barrabé, Laure, Mouly, Arnaud, Lowry Ii, Porter P. & Munzinger, Jérôme, 2011, Reinstatement of the endemic New Caledonian genus Thiollierea Montrouz. (Rubiaceae) necessitated by the polyphyly of Bikkia Reinw. as currently circumscribed, Adansonia (3) 33 (1), pp. 115-134 : 120-122

Genus Thiollierea Montrouz.

Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres

et Arts de Lyon, Section des Sciences 10: 217 (1860). —

Type: T. artensis Montrouz.

Grisia Brongn. , Bulletin de la Société botanique de France 12: 405 (1865). — Bikkia sect. Grisia (Brongn.) K.Schum. in Engler & Prantl, Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 4 (4): 20 (1891). — Type: G. campanulata Brongn. (= Thiollierea campanulata (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod.), Nouvelles Archives du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris 4: 10-38 (1868).

Tatea Seem. , Flora Vitiensis: 125 (1866). — Type: T. portlandioides Seem. (= Thiollierea campanulata (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod.).

DESCRIPTION

Shrubs to 3(-6) m high, or small trees, hermaphrodite, branched, leaves clustered at the end of branches. Vegetative buds strongly waxy. Leaves opposite, subsessile to petiolate. Stipules interpetiolar, annular, sheathing, entirely joined together, persistent, truncate and not acuminate, inner surface generally covered by an indument and colleters. Blade smooth, glabrous, coriaceous to very coriaceous, margins revolute, venation brochidodromous, secondary veins generally not obvious abaxially. Domatia lacking. Inflorescences supra-axillary, subsessile to pedunculate, drooping, in reduced dichasial cymes, simple, compound or fasciculate, lacking a subtending specialized leaf, 1- to 16-flowered; flowers pedicellate; bracts and bracteoles present, reduced or foliaceous, axillary to inflorescence branches and flowers. Flowers 4- to 5- (to 6-)merous, hermaphroditic, actinomorphic to slightly zygomorphic; hypanthium globose, conical or cylindrical, glabrous, puberulent or tomentose, smooth, fluted or with wings. Calyx tube present or strongly reduced or absent, sometimes with a secondary tear, calyx lobes with margins involute and united to form a sheath, glabrous to pubescent within, inter- and/or intra-sepalous colleters few to many. Corolla campanulate to conical, papyraceous to coriaceous, aestivation imbricate, tube angled, longer than corolla lobes, generally glabrous outside, sometimes hirsute at the base, glabrous or pubescent inside in its proximal half, but always glabrous at base, lobes triangular, straight, curved or reflexed. Stamens alternipetalous, included to exserted, inserted at corolla base, connate, forming a disc adnate to the corolla base, anthers basifixed, twisted at anthesis, filaments glabrous or pubescent, but always glabrous at base. Style filiform, stigma filiform to clavate, divided into two stigmatic lobes, receptive surface restricted to the apex or extended along style in two thin lateral lines. Ovary bilocular, placenta axial, bifid and flat. Ovules flat, imbricate or not imbricate, orientation acro- and/or basipetalous, in 1 to 3 series per placental arm, fewer than 75 per locule. Fruit a capsule with 2 locules, dehiscing by 4 sutures, 2 septicidal and complete, and 2 loculicidal and partial. Seeds 1-3 mm long, circular to elliptic, flat, unwinged, with alveolate ornamentation.

DISTRIBUTION AND ECOLOGY

Species of Thiollierea are all endemic to New Caledonia and are confined to “maquis miniers” ( Jaffré 1980) and forest edges, on ultramafic substrates (peridotites and serpentinites), ferrallitic ferritic soils and/or hypermagnesian soils. They occur from about 50 to 1500 m elevation.

LIST OF NEW COMBINATIONS

Reinstatement of the genus Thiollierea requires the seven new combinations made below, to be added to the three names already available in the genus for accepted species, T.artensis Montrouz. , T. campanulata (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod., and T. macrophylla (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod. We provide a nomenclatural synopsis of all the ten species in the following list.

The key to species provided by Jérémie & Hallé (1976) is only partially adequate, and several couplets are in need of revision. A new key is therefore presented in Barrabé et al. (2011).

Kuntze (1891: 279) used the name Cormigonus for a number of species assigned here to both Thiollierea and Bikkia s.s. However, because Cormigonus has been rejected against Bikkia , all the binomials established by Kuntze are illegitimate and consequently must be rejected ( McNeill et al. 2006: article 56.1).

Baumann-Bodenheim (1988) published two names under Thiollierea that are invalid because they each lacked a direct and complete reference to the basionym ( McNeill et al. 2006: article33.2), although they were validated the following year (Baumann-Bodenheim 1989). These two names are: Thiollierea fritillarioides (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod.(1988:98, validated 1989:98), and Thiollierea macrophylla (Brongn.) Baum. -Bod. (1988:98, validated 1989: 98). Moreover, Baumann- Bodenheim(1988: 73; 1989: 98)had simultaneously created a new name Grisia artensis (Montrouz.)Baum. - Bod., but this name was invalid, because it was merely cited as a synonym of the taxon Thiollierea artensis Montrouz. ( McNeill et al. 2006: article 34.1).